Originally Posted by
Raffles
Adam, you really need to relax a bit. There are many reasons why a post may be written when it would not otherwise be written - perhaps the owners of the two business are friends, perhaps the other company is advertising, perhaps the author wants to curry favour with a certain business (for clarity, I have done all of these) ..... paying $5 commission is pretty low down the scale.
(I traded a £400 conference ticket recently for a brief mention - not a recommendation, a mention - of the event on my site, albeit I got no commission on sales generated.)
As I see overnight that the Koch boys have just helped acquire one of your most public promoters of climate change, in order to silence it, I suggest you turn your energies that way.
I understood sbm's post to say that organizers were using a commission system to get bloggers to write posts and sell tickets for their events. That's what I was responding to. You are okay with a system of travel blogs that purports to peddle disinterested advice when it is not. I'm not. I see no reason I should relax and be okay with such deception of readers, many of which have no idea that they're being taken advantage of.
And thanks for your concern, but I'm quite adept at focusing my energies on pressing global issues while also having concerns about deceptive marketing by bloggers.